...use of marijuana products is becoming an increasingly popular topic for debate. In November of this year, the Control, Regulate, and Tax Adult Use of Marijuana Initiative will be proposed for the California ballot. According to a poll conducted in June of 2015 from the Public Policy Institute of California, around 54% of California’s voter population in favor of legalization of marijuana, so theoretically it should pass. The complete legalization of a decriminalized industry is going to have a major impact on the state of California. Other states that have legalized marijuana for recreational use have vastly benefitted from this change economically as well as socially. The State of California, a progressive state comprised of a diverse population with an array political standpoints, should benefit from this change immensely. Colorado made a bold move to become the first jurisdiction to legalize marijuana for recreational use. In February of 2014, about a month after legal recreational sale commenced, the Colorado Legislative Council (CLC) projected that marijuana taxes would generate $55 million. At the end of the fiscal year which concluded in June, the actual figure was $66 million in tax revenue, which represented .3% of the state’s $23.1 billion budget. Revenue is only to grow with $75 million last fiscal year and almost $90 million in 2016-2017. These fairly new taxes are beginning to add up for consumers, which is why Amendment 64 states that marijuana should...
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...The Benefit of Legalizing Marijuana Of all legal reformations that should be made, the legalization of marijuana is perhaps the most necessary. If legalized on a controlled basis, it could greatly benefit our country in a variety of ways. Clearly the most controversial topic is marijuana's benefit to the medical community. The economy would also be a beneficiary of marijuana's legalization through taxation and all the while crime rates would inevitably decrease throughout the country. While many citizens are opposed to the legalization of marijuana they are often misinformed and misguided. Marijuana is a drug that is overlooked and can be used in many positive ways. There are many people that oppose the idea of legalizing marijuana and their point of view can be justified, but marijuana can be used for other purposes than getting “high”. Although there are valid points to each side, ultimately, if legalized the benefits of legal marijuana could greatly outweigh the risk. It has been documented that marijuana can severely reduce some effects of cancer. Also, it is known that marijuana has prolonged the lives of people who were diagnosed as terminally ill. Many rely on the drug to ease their pain and suffering. Another useful benefit is its aide in reducing nausea in chemotherapy patients. Medicinal uses for cannabis date back to 2737 B.C. when the Chinese emperor and pharmacologist Shen Neng prescribed the drug for gout, malaria, beriberi, rheumatism, and memory problems...
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...Legalization of Marijuana Michelle Shepard Soc 120 July 16, 2012 Danielle Camacho There is no denying that the drug problem in our country today has reached an epidemic proportion. The problem has gotten so out of hand that many options are being considered to control and or solve it. Trying to end the drug war may not seen to be the best answer in the beginning, but those so-called wars on drugs have not been very successful at stopping the drug wars. I feel that there should be some different options. The legalization of marijuana is an option which hasn’t received much of a chance, but should be given one. Given that marijuana has known important medical uses, such as the alleviation of nausea, and the treatment of glaucoma, can the government justify banning it just because some individuals use it for recreational purposes? Is it even the business of the government to regulate the private lives of its citizens? I really don’t condone the use of any kind of drug use, but a drug such as marijuana should be legalized to a certain extent, because marijuana helps people with some medical conditions they may have. In order for one to solve the ongoing issue of the legalization of marijuana one must take a look at the classical theory of deontology. Deontology is the classical theory where the reason for which an act is done is assessed. (Mosser, 2010) When assessing the issue of the legalization of marijuana, one must question the exact reasons as to why individuals...
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...Marijuana is a drug but there are more dangerous drugs out there that have way more effects on you then marijuana. Hello I’m Ikequan ivory and I’m for the legalization of marijuana. Recently the use of marijuana has increased in kids and teens form the age of 12 to 17. I feel as if they should legalize marijuana because it's a very light drug and it doesn't matter how much you smoke it you not going to strip naked and run down the street. Marijuana is a mellow drug it makes you calm and relaxed which means the user is more likely to be chill and not in danger of hurting anyone. "The Obama administration has consistently reiterated its firm form of drug legalization." The government tries to make it seem like marijuana is a very strong drug like meth or crack which are very deadly drugs. In the research I have done for this topic, this is what i found out the government is saying about marijuana "Marijuana intoxication can cause distorted perceptions, difficulty in thinking and problem solving, and problems with learning and memory." "Other research has shown marijuana smoke to contain carcinogens and to be an irritant to the lungs. Marijuana smoke, in fact, contains 50‐70 percent more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than does tobacco smoke." Yes marijuana is a drug but it’s not dangerous you never hear about anybody smoking marijuana then killing several of people and that’s because marijuana is a downer which means it just calms the user down. I think that if weed is classified...
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...that marijuana is bad. Why are we able to go into any store and buy tobacco, which kills 400,000 people annually; alcohol, which kills 100,000 people annually; and caffeine, which kills 2,000 people annually. According to the New England Journal of medicine, you would have to smoke 1500 pounds of marijuana in under 15 minutes to OD. Marijuana was prohibited in 1937, but marijuana prohibition isn’t working. Today between 95 and 100 million Americans admit to having tried it and nearly 15 million have used it within the past month. Some people believe that marijuana is bad and does damage to the body but alcohol and cigarettes are more dangerous. Alcohol has a high level of sulphate and can cause alcohol poisoning. Cigarettes contain over 4,000 chemicals including 43 known cancer compounds and 400 other toxins. Marijuana is not 100% free of chemicals but it more natural because it is from the earth and contains only 100 chemicals. ill be discussing marijuana legislation first wat is marijuana and hw does it affect humans? second when and why did marijuana become illegal? and why states are legalizing marijuana for medical purposes. using these points i intend to inform you about marijuana and the movement to legalize it. according to the national institute on drug abuse, a survey shows that over 98 million americans over the age of 12 have tried marijuana at least one time in their life. what is marijuana? and how does it affect humans? according to webMD, marijuana , is...
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...Why Marijuana should not be made legalized * Introduction * Marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug in the United States, with nearly 17 million Americans age 12 and older reporting past‐month use, and 374,000 people entering an emergency room annually with a primary marijuana problem. * Proposals such as legalization that would promote marijuana use are inconsistent with this public health and safety approach. * This is in contradiction with the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and any economic argument that applies to the legalization of marijuana applies most other illicit drugs. * Tax incentives argument * Alcohol Tax Incentives to Cost incentives * The debate over how much tax money recreational marijuana laws could produce is playing an outsize role in the campaigns for and against legalization — and both sides concede they're not really sure what would happen. * The argument is for: * it could prove a windfall for cash-strapped states with new taxes on pot and reduced criminal justice costs. * The report shows that marijuana legalization -- replacing prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation -- would save $7.7 billion per year in state and federal expenditures on prohibition enforcement and produce tax revenues of at least $2.4 billion annually if marijuana were taxed like most consumer goods. If, however, marijuana were taxed similarly to alcohol or tobacco, it might generate...
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...legal in our country and controlled and distributed by our government yet there are more deaths related to tobacco and alcohol compared to marijuana; therefore, the laws against personal marijuana use does not make sense and marijuana should be legalized. • “Marijuana is far less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. Around 50,000 people die each year from alcohol poisoning. Similarly, more than 400,000 deaths each year are attributed to tobacco smoking. By comparison, marijuana is nontoxic and cannot cause death by overdose.” (5) • “Marijuana is the third most popular recreational drug in America (behind only alcohol and tobacco), and has been used by nearly 100 million Americans. According to government surveys, some 25 million Americans have smoked marijuana in the past year, and more than 14 million do so regularly despite harsh laws against its use.” (5) • “According to the prestigious European medical journal, The Lancet, "The smoking of cannabis, even long-term, is not harmful to health. ... It would be reasonable to judge cannabis as less of a threat ... than alcohol or tobacco."…” (5) If marijuana were to be legal and controlled responsibly, the state and taxpayers would benefit because the cost to enforce the drug is very high and yet marijuana is still very easy to obtain. • “Enforcing marijuana prohibition costs taxpayers an estimated $10 billion annually and results in the arrest of more than 829,000 individuals per year -- far more...
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...the legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes. Central Idea: People should have the option to choose their methods of medication; therefore, marijuana should be legalized for medicinal purposes. Introduction: ATTENTION A. How many of you take Advil for a headache? How many of you use a remedy passed down from your grandparents or parents to alleviate a cold? How many people do you know suffer from migraines or experience back aches and take prescription pain killers to ease their pain? Do you know a cancer patient suffering through the effects of chemotherapy? B. Today I’m going to attempt to persuade you to support, by voting for the measures and propositions that allow the legal access of cannabis or marijuana for medicinal purposes. C. I have done several college assignments as well as become a member of Americans for Safe Access, the largest organization of patients, medical professionals, scientists and concerned citizens promoting safe and legal access to cannabis. I, unfortunately, also know several women who have had breast cancer and suffered through excruciating chemotherapy treatments. D. I’m going to discuss the classification of marijuana and compare it to other drugs in its schedule, let you know what you can do to give people the legal choice of using this method/type of medication, and tell you about some of the benefits of the legalization of cannabis. Transition Statement: So what’s the problem with marijuana? Body: NEED-...
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...Release the Green! Marijuana is a very noticeable and scandalous issue in the world today. Although many malicious entitlements have been said about cannabis in current history, the certainties are slowly starting to reappear. Unluckily, these facts are being very heavily criticized because of the clichéd view of what people see as the classic “weed smoker.” This twisted observation of a lazy and unenthusiastic America is the consequence of over seventy years of information and deception spread by private interests who needed weed illegal for their own particular gains. As just a regular citizen and someone that doesn’t even use marijuana, I think that the drug should be legalized for all uses. Consuming marijuana for pharmaceutical purposes is not a new discovery. Actually, written references to consume medical marijuana go back to almost 5,000 years ago (herer, 167). Western treatment included marijuana’s medical properties in the mid-1800s, and by the start of the 20th century, doctors had issued more than 150 credentials in the Western medical literature recommending its use for a variety of disorders (Miron, 117). These conditions include relief from pain, glaucoma, nausea and movement disorders. It can also be used to help patients that have or had HIV/AIDS or cancer patients that have to go through chemotherapy because it motivates their appetites. In our day, thousands of patients are capable of use marijuana as an effective technique of cure for their illnesses. This...
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...Should Marijuana smoking be legalized? In human history, psychoactive consumption is one of the most ancient practices. Even in our society it is considered an illegal practice, although it is a common habit for some social groups. There have been several attempts to prevent the consumption of drugs. Despite the effort, so far all the policies raised have failed. The war on drugs primarily aimed the controversial drug marijuana, which is still the most used illegal drug throughout. Due to the consumption of this drug, our generation faces the challenge of deciding whether marijuana should remain illegal or must become legal. Usually, people do not know much about marijuana. Everyone thinks it is as harmful as heroin and cocaine. However, marijuana it is fully comparable with legal substances such as alcohol and tobacco, in terms of their impact and damage. I believe that marijuana should be legalized for the reasons I will explain in the following paragraphs. First, marijuana can be used for medical purposes. The use of marijuana for medical purposes is not a recent finding. The use of medical marijuana dates back around 5000 years. There are several writings from Western culture recommending the use of this substance for a variety of health problems and disorders. Today, many doctors agree on the use of marijuana as an alternative medicine because it can reduce the pain of many diseases. Marijuana is useful to relieve pain, nausea, glaucoma, and muscular problems. It is also...
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...Heading Heading Heading Title A lot of people in America perceive marijuana and people who use marijuana as something so horrible because of the way that the government portrays it, but most of those people who think this way fail to know the truth about marijuana. The fact of the matter is that the “dangers” of marijuana are over exaggerated and its classification is way out of proportion. Views about the use of cannabis have evolved over the decades. Cannabis has been around for centuries and legally used and distributed as a natural resource until it began to gain restrictions and regulations in the late 1800s and early 1900s soon leading to the illegalization of it in the 1930s with the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 (Guither). In the eyes of many people, the reasons for the illegalization of growing and distributing the hemp plant are untrue or over exaggerated, and this paper will address why marijuana should be legalized in America. The reasons for why the government should take the action of legalizing the use of marijuana, or cannabis, are endless, but this paper focuses on the facts that cannabis has a multitude of known, positive uses, that legalizing it will take thousands and thousands of good people out of prisons, and that legalizing the use of marijuana could actually have economically positive effects on the country. Marijuana has been around long before it was known as a recreational drug in the early 1900s. The known uses of the hemp plant go back to as early...
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...Marijuana Legalization Name Institution Marijuana Legalization Uruguayan government must be the most daring in the world. According to Mic (2014), they proved this as late as they legalized the use of marijuana. There have been divergent opinions on whether to legalize weed or not. And with Uruguay providing the laboratory for scientific prove, it sounds an alert to other nation on pressure to appreciate and embrace the legalization of weed. Against many false dogmas surrounding the use of the ‘drug’, there exist countless benefits from its legalization. This writing elaborates why nations should follow the trend and legalize marijuana. Firstly, the illegality of marijuana is based on unproven theories and delusions. Use of the modern scientific records proves against dogmas of reefer madness associated with marijuana consumption (Alternet, 2007). Claims of how vastly dangerous marijuana use can be, are nothing else, but 20th-century prejudices that existed without any scientific evidence. Since the discovery of cannabinoid receptor system during the late 1980s, cases of psychoneurotic hysteria concerns are yet to be confirmed. Also, a belief wide that marijuana helps in generation of criminals is nothing away from lies. Somebody’s character in inborn and prevalent. We have as many criminal culprits who don’t know the taste of marijuana. There is no any ground to support this. Secondly, almost every government has failed to control the use of marijuana. According to WHO (world...
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...Marijuana Legalization The legalization of marijuana is something that I have always been interested in. In high school, I heard about people first smoking marijuana, and I thought it was so bad because of everything that I was taught in elementary and middle school. Kids always pledged to stay away from any type of drug. Once I knew friends that were smoking and I talked to them about it, they made it seem so harmless, and that’s when I really got curious about it. Then I started to find out more information about marijuana and its effects, and I started to wonder whether marijuana should be legal for recreational use? After all my research I have come to the conclusion that marijuana should be legal for recreational use in the United States. Lets start by looking at the economical perspective. The United States has a national debt of trillions of dollars, and a huge financial problem is how much our law enforcement and Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) are spending to enforce the prohibition of marijuana. “In America we spend nearly $8 billion trying to enforce the laws prohibiting the use and possession of marijuana” (Cartwright 86). This money could be spent on highways, schools and other government properties but instead it is spent on enforcing laws that are being broken every single day. Another huge part of the DEA is the so-called war on drugs. Mexican drug cartels are a huge supplier of marijuana to the U.S. “In 2009, the U.S. National Drug Intelligence Center estimated...
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...you think legalizing marijuana would bring to the U.S? Legalizing cannabis would actually generate 8.5 billion dollars in federal and state tax revenue per year, according to a 2013 study from Cato Institute in Washington D.C. Purpose (state specific purpose, relate topic to audience and establish credibility): Throughout the years, we have yet to legalize cannabis after all the facts of this topic have been completely laid out. It’s time we take this industry into our country’s hands and not let it go unregulated and untaxed. State Thesis & Main Points: The legalization of cannabis would be another step closer to the way out of this economic crisis our country is in today. the regulation of this product would bring economic improvement, new-found resources, and medical aid. however, we must establish both the positive and the negative sides to truly comprehend this movement. Body (3-5 MAIN POINTS PREFERRED (USE ONLY COMPLETE SENTENCES I. MAIN POINT (state as a single declarative sentence): A major upside in the legalization of cannabis is the benefit of economic improvement. A. SUBPOINT: Legalizing this drug would bring about millions to billions of dollars in tax revenue. 1. Marijuana growers account for 14 billion dollars a year in sales in CA, making it the states most valuable cash crop which is a perfect reason to tax it. a. Economist Stephen Easton estimated in 2012 that legal marijuana could be a 45-100 billion...
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...Should Marijuana Be Legalized The legalization of marijuana has been a hot topic for several years in the United States. Those opposed to the legalization say that marijuana is addictive, leads to harder drug use and increases criminal behavior. The use of marijuana for medicinal purposes dates back to as early as 2737 B.C., where Chinese Emperor Shen Neng would prescribe marijuana tea for treatment of a variety of ailments (Stack, Suddath, 2009). Research shows that marijuana should be legalized in the United States because of the amount of money we are spending trying to prevent its use and lost income not collecting taxes, it is beneficial for medicinal purposes, and U.S. citizens want it to be legal. Each year in the United States a large amount of resources is spent policing, prosecuting and jailing people for marijuana offenses. In 2010 New York City spent approximately $75 million for the arrest and prosecution of people for small amounts of marijuana (Levine, Siegal, 2011). That is money that could be spent elsewhere on programs that really needed it. The $75 million dollars could have easily been spent to help with the cities homeless problem, or be spent to strengthen the cities schools. Statistics show that from 2009 to 2010 the rate of murder, rape, assault and robbery went up in New York City (city-data, 2014). The man hours used catching and arresting people for marijuana could have been used to help prevent some of these crimes. Jeffrey Miron a economics...
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